Q&A

How come a guy will act interested in a girl, but after they sleep together he acts like he doesn’t know her?

This kind of guy is not interested in guarding a girl’s heart. His goal was sex, and her goal was intimacy. He got what he wanted. The thrill of the chase is over, and his respect for her is gone. She was only desirable as long as she was unattainable.

He might also feel uneasy around her because he used her. When he did that, he missed the point of what it means to be a man. As a result, he probably feels shame when he sees her; her face might remind him of his emptiness. He might even feel sorry for her, so it is easier to ignore her. If a guy is exchanging sexual intimacies with a woman before he marries her, he has made the mistake of asking for her heart before he is willing to hold and guard it with his life.

Here is a glimpse inside the heart of an honest guy who did just this:

“I finally got a girl into bed—actually it was in a car—when I was seventeen. I thought it was the hottest thing there was, but then she started saying that she loved me and was getting clingy. I figured out that there had probably been a dozen other guys before me who thought that they had “conquered” her but who were really just objects of her need for security. That realization took all the wind out of my sails. I could not respect someone who gave in as easily as she did. I was amazed to find that after four weeks of having sex as often as I wanted, I was tired of her. I didn’t see any point in continuing the relationship. I finally dumped her, which made me feel even worse, because I could see that she was hurting. I felt pretty low.”[1].

During premarital sex two bodies are speaking a language of permanence that does not exist in reality. If either person’s heart is invested in the union, that person will be disappointed, hurt, and angry when the breakup comes. One girl wrote, “I thought Mike really loved me, but last night we had sex for the first time, and this morning he told my girlfriend that he didn’t want to see me anymore. I thought that giving Mike what he wanted would make him happy and he’d love me more.”[2] To avoid this disappointment, a girl needs to realize that sexual intimacy is the culmination and reward of total commitment, not a way to keep a guy interested.

Unfortunately, many young women think that a physical relationship will draw a guy closer. I have seen plenty of relationships that started out fine, but as the couple became more physical, the emotional, social, and spiritual aspects of the relationship atrophied. (Atrophy is what happens to your muscles when you’re paralyzed. Because they’re not used, they wither away.)

That is what happens to the other dimensions of a relationship when physical intimacy dominates. The solution is restraint. A young woman will find the intimacy for which she yearns only by respecting herself.